the battleship potemkin

Some that I really like and are generally considered to be very good:

The Sorrow and the Pity (1969, dir: Marcel Ophuls) - about Nazi occupied France during the Second World war, in particular the French Resistance and the Vichy government of France who collaborated with the Nazis. Extra points because Woody Allen tries to get Annie Hall to see it in that movie Annie Hall.

Shoah (1985, dir: Claude Lanzmann) - 9 hour documentary about the Holocaust that does not use any archive footage. Lanzmann visits places across Europe, including former death camps, meets victims now living all over the world, witnesses (including now grown up Polish farm boys who would shout things at trainloads of Jews as they went past on their way to Treblinka) and even the perpetrators (he tracks down a former concentration camp guard and secretly films him). 

Waltz with Bashir (2008, dir: Air Folman) - An animated documentary about Folman's own experiences of Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. An absolutely superb film, and completely unique in execution.

Instrument (1998, dir: Jem Cohen) - Jem Cohen has been following the band Fugazi around since their beginnings, culminating in this brilliant film. Maybe only interesting to fans of the band, though I think it's one of the best rock documentaries around, showing the unique position Fugazi forged for themselves, and completely eschewing the usual 'talking heads' mode of rock music films.

Encounters at the End of the World (2009, dir: Werner Herzog) - Herzog documents the people who choose to live in the wilderness of Antarctica, and leaves no doubt that he will not come up with another film about penguins.

Grizzly Man (2005, dir: Werner Herzog) - I think everybody's seen this. But y'know, a guy who went and lived with bears in Alaska makes for interesting documentary subject matter.

Touching the Void (2003, dir: Kevin Macdonald) - Joe Simpson and Simon Yates tell the story of their perilous climb, terrible accident and unbelievable escape from a mountain climbing trip in Peru. Joe Simpson's book of the same name is a great read too.

When We Were Kings (1996, dir: Leon Gast) - About the Rumble in the Jungle in Zaire between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. Norman Mailer's there too!

Capturing the Friedmans (2003, dir: Andrew Jarecki) - Intimate home video footage tells the story of a family ripped apart by allegations child molestation in the 80s.

Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmakers Apocalypse (1991, dir: Fax Bahr, George Hickenlooper, Eleanor Coppola) - The legendary story of the making of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. Watch as Coppola slowly goes insane, Brando turns up fat, sets are destroyed by storms, water buffalo are slaughtered, Hopper is on drugs, Sheen gets drunk and cries, and the Filippino army take all their helicopters away mid-shot.

1991: The Year Punk Broke (1992, dir: David Markey) - On the road with Sonic Youth and Nirvana in 1991!
 
No Direction Home (2005, dir: Martin Scorsese) - Scorsese on Dylan.

Man on Wire (2008, dir: James Marsh) - A french wire walker plots to throw a wire between the twin towers of the World Trade Centre and walk across in the 1970s. Hiring a team of accomplices, he manages to do it by fooling security guards and evading police. A wonderful story, brilliantly tense, and just...wow!

The Fearless Freaks (2006, dir: Bradley Beasley) – The story of one of my all time favourite bands, the Flaming Lips. Again, perhaps only of real interest to Lips fans, but it’s a great (and wonderfully implausible) story nonetheless.

The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2005, dir: Jeff Feuerzeig) – Perhaps one of the few indie rock documentaries that really would interest just about anyone and not just fans of the subject, mainly because of the incredible story of Daniel Johnston himself, a guy who recorded songs in his bedroom on a tape recorder, whose lo-fi pop became a little bit famous when he blagged his way onto MTV and then his t-shirt was later worn by Kurt Cobain. Also he suffers from manic depression and at one point is flying in a plane with his dad and throws the keys out the window causing them to crash.


I can't think of any documentaries on Russia or the Russian revolution. Frisky Skeleton mentioned Potemkin (maybe they were joking cos its not a documentary, but well worth seeing anyway, as are Eisenstein's other two main films about the Russian Revolution: Strike and October: Ten Days that Shook the World).  Oh, there's Man With a Movie Camera, a 1929 silent experimental documentary about life in Russia. It's probably available online somewhere. If you're interested in World War 2, the World at War series narrated by Lawrence Olivier is a classic, and Night and Fog is probably the first documentary film about the Holocaust.

I've heard good things about Hoop Dreams and King of Kong, but haven't seen them. And y'know you've also got your Michael Moore documentaries whic are very popular and pretty entertaining, but I wouldn't nessecarily put them up on a best of list.

waltz with bazir gets lot of coverage everywhere. fugazi feh... name popping everywhere... who are these guys... fugazi! feh...  
Touching the Void is good! if i recall right there was some repeating there and big emotions but you can't really exaggarate that nightmare really.
this is sort of trashy suggestion and it's propably not too good but the ray charles movie starring jamie fox... no scrap that out.

One Day in September (1999): About the Munich massacre, something a lot of people don't know anything about.

Scratch (2001): About DJs/Turntablism/Hip-hop, love this one.

Those are both brilliant recommendations. I remember hearing about Scratch when I was at university and keeping my eye out for it because it sounded great. Finally got round to seeing it a few years later, excellent movie.

oh yeah I've been meaning to see F is for Fake for ages and ages. Sposed to be great.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h-scpQ_szM

Streetwise, a documentary about young kids (like 13 and 14) that lived on the streets of Seattle in the 80's.  Really interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h-scpQ_szM

Streetwise, a documentary about young kids (like 13 and 14) that lived on the streets of Seattle in the 80's.  Really interesting.

just watching the end of it in a moment. it's really good.

just watching the end of it in a moment. it's really good.

Yeah I thought it was pretty interesting how the kids were so young yet they survived on their own like that.  I remember when the one kid was like, "I hitchhiked all the way to New York City, stayed for an hour then left." 

Yeah I thought it was pretty interesting how the kids were so young yet they survived on their own like that.  I remember when the one kid was like, "I hitchhiked all the way to New York City, stayed for an hour then left." 

i'm pretty sure almost everything everybody in this thing said was a lie or some kind of half-truth bullshit, but i kind of believe that one part yeah. it's a really good old doc, so people should check it out if you are reading this topic. the whole thing is on youtube right there, as well.  i'll talk about it in some more detail tomorrow i think.

the parts that stuck out for me were the adults in the movie. actually a couple of them were all right i think - the older black guy's mum, the preacher in the street - and then you had the guy who killed himself's dad, who was grabbing for some moral authority he knew he didn't have and that was sad cos you saw it was going nowhere. i can't remember most of their names, they just flitted in and out.

it'll freak you out the way some of these kids talk and move like 25 year olds. alot of these kids are dead now, apparently, although a few have moved up into other things.

it's a sad one!

oh except that one girl who was tough as fuck and really cool. she wore the stripey hat. i don't know her name. everything she done was the best.

it's was a bit overly focused on white kids but whatever every aspect of this needed to be done so it all adds up, i think.

I second American Movie and The Devil and Daniel Johnston.

I second American Movie and The Devil and Daniel Johnston.

maybe you should do more than second...maybe say a little bit.

Try The Genius of Photography,..it's about photography. more on history of it but it provides some new perspective towards understanding photography in general.